The social potency of affect: Identification and power in the immanent structuring of practice

Abstract

We address the centrality of affect in structuring social practices, including those of organizing and managing. Social practices, it is argued, are contingent upon actors’ affectively charged involvement in immanent, yet indeterminate social relations. To understand this generative involvement, we commend a temporally-sensitive, critically-oriented theoretical framework, grounded in an affect-based ontology of practice. We demonstrate the relevance and credibility of this proposal through an analysis of the interactions of Board members in a UK consulting company.